Usually, when people hear about off shore work, they would immediately say that it is Business Process Outsourcing. While this is partly true, It doesn’t do justice to the range of services usually asked of the outsourcing companies. It is partly true. After all, most companies would outsource services such as Call center work. Still, the mentality is also wrong since other tasks are given to these outsourcing partners.
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This is because there are actually 2 common types of Outsourced work. The two types are Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) and Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO). While they are both outsourced works and are commonly interchanged, there are actually some differences between them.
Here are some of the ways that you can differentiate between BPO and KPO.
Business Process Outsourcing:
BPO is where an offshore outsourcing partner does the Back office processes of a company. These are usually the manual tasks that help the company make its services more efficient but are not necessarily considered highly critical. These can also be tasks where large manpower is needed or additional equipment or infrastructure is required.
Examples of BPO services would usually include contact centers, chat and email support, website maintenance, design and Search Engine Optimization, and even data entry or encoding services.
Knowledge Process outsourcing:
KPO is where workers of a different company carry out knowledge related and information-related work. Nowadays, KPO is usually done by an offshore outsourcing partner. Unlike Business Process Outsourcing, KPO typically involves high-value work carried out by highly skilled staff.
Examples of KPO tasks done are investment research services such as equity, credit, risk-related research, Market research and analysis, legal research services, and even patent research services.